2014 students, each roll 9 (standard, unbiased) six-sided dice and record how many times each of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 appear. Find the minimum number of students who must have recorded the same result as another student.
Source: WISCONSIN MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE & ENGINEERING TALENT SEARCH.
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Let x i , 1 ≤ i ≤ 6 be the number of times i appears after that the single student rolled the 9 dices. We have that
i = 1 ∑ 6 x i = 9 , x i ≥ 0 .
In other terms, the single outcome i can appear 0 , 1 , . . . or 9 times out of 9 roll. Despite the possible outcomes, the sum of the frequences has to be 9 , since the student rolled exactly 9 dices. The previous equation has ( 6 − 1 9 + 6 − 1 ) = ( 5 1 4 ) = 2 0 0 2 possible solution, applying a notorious stars and bars argument. Hence, even if the first 2 0 0 2 students will record 2 0 0 2 different solution, the minimum number of students who must have recorded the same result as another student is 2 0 1 4 − 2 0 0 2 = 1 2 .